Live Streaming Video

Live streaming video services allow anyone to stream what they want over the Internet to anyone who is interested in watching. The only real rules are regarding the content, with no copyright-infringements or criminal offenses allowed.

There are already a number of well-established companies offering ordinary people the chance to host their own online television show, with Stickam, Ustream, Livestream, and Justin.tv all popular and all user-friendly to varying degrees.

TinyChat

However, TinyChat hopes to compete alongside these established companies with its new TinyChat.tv service.

TinyChat is a startup which has managed to gain a foothold in the live video chat sector over recent months. It’s popular even at this early stage of its life, mainly because it’s ultra-simple to use, with no sign in or technical knowhow required.

TinyChat.tv is, however, a different proposition.

TinyChat.tv

The basic interface of TinyChat.tv is very similar to that of the regular TinyChat. But room owners can customize their rooms and decide whether to force users to sign in using a Twitter or Facebook login.

The main advantage TinyChat.tv has over its competitors is the multi-participant shows. The main disadvantage is how long (relatively speaking) it takes to set up a room and start broadcasting.

Pro members paying the $9.95 asking price can set passwords for private rooms and stream in higher quality video. The service could and should be improved immensely by developers using the free API (Application Programming Interface).

Conclusions

I’m not sure we actually need another live steaming service but then TinyChat.tv is offering something slightly different than the rest. At this moment in time it cannot hope to compete with its long-established competitors but I wouldn’t bet against it managing to do so in a short space of time.

[Via ReadWriteWeb]

Netflix On Xbox 360

Xbox 360 owners gained access to Netflix’s ‘Watch Instantly’ video-on-demand streaming service last November with the roll-out of the long-awaited New Xbox Experience. This gave Xbox Live subscribers access to the 12,000-plus movies and television episodes Netflix gives away to its subscribers.

This was just the latest step in the evolution of video games consoles from being meant just for games to becoming true multimedia devices designed as living room entertainment hubs.

Games Consoles = Entertainment Hubs

Since then, all three home games consoles, the Xbox 360, PS3, and Wii have added video to their line-up of offerings.

The Xbox 360 has secured more television and movies on both sides of the Atlantic, with content from NBC Universal amongst other. 1080p HD Zune playback and a console version of the Sky Player are also on the way to the Microsoft console.

The PS3 has added a music video service called Vidzone to its line-up, which acts like an on-demand MTV. Thanks to its in-built Web browser, the likes of Hulu and the BBC iPlayer can also be viewed on the Sony console.

The Wii hasn’t faired quite as well, but its Web browser can also stream video in the same way the PS3 can. And with YouTube rolling out a version of the site intended purely for watching on television, Wii owners aren’t without options.

New Netflix Features

Today saw Microsoft unveil another update to its Xbox 360 dashboard. It includes several new features for Netflix playback. Party Watch is a social feature that enables Netflix users to watch content together on their Xbox 360 consoles.

While improved playback functionality, an improved search function, and more information regarding what your friends are watching all add to the usefulness of Netflix on the Xbox 360.

Netflix An Xbox 360 Exclusive?

Interestingly, the patch notes for the update also includes a section concerning the exclusivity of Netflix on games consoles:

“This exclusive partnership offers you the ability to instantly stream movies and TV episodes from Netflix to the television via Xbox 360. Xbox 360 will be the only game console to offer this movie-watching experience, available to Xbox LIVE Gold members who are also Netflix unlimited plan subscribers, at no additional cost.”

This promise for the Xbox 360 to “be the only game console” featuring Netflix Watch Instantly flies in the face of rumors from April which suggested the service was also on its way to the PS3 and Wii.

Either Microsoft has secured a long-term exclusivity agreement with Netflix or it’s hedging its bets that Netflix will decide not to branch out and welcome rival consoles to the party. Either way, the Xbox 360 looks to have secured Netflix for the foreseeable future.

[Via NewTeeVee]

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Social Online Video Viewing

The idea of social viewing for online video has been around for a while now. Lycos lets people watch movies together, while PalTalk allows video chat to be integrated into rooms with multiple users. Then in October 2008, CBS introduced social viewing rooms to its Web site, which allows groups of people to watch CBS shows online together in the same way they would in a living room.

That’s the key to this whole idea; moving the real-life living room to the virtual world. Because online video viewing is usually a solitary pastime, with even the best clips only being shared either by embedding or linking rather than watching together with other people in real-time. But Watchitoo changes all that.

Watch It Too With Watchitoo

Watchitoo is a start-up based in New York and Israel which operates on the premise that humans are inherently social animals. The increased popularity of social networking of late would seem to back this premise up. So Watchitoo attempts to combine several elements into one in order to allow online video viewing with an added social twist.

With Watchitoo, anyone can open a room, either public or private, where either invited guests or a group of strangers can socialize. There’s the option to text chat, video chat, and most importantly share YouTube videos with each other. So it’s kind of like watching a television channel made up of selected YouTube videos with your friends. Or random strangers if you prefer.

Revenue and Content Concerns

Watchitoo was founded in 2007 and has been in private beta testing for a number of months. But it’s now open to the public, with a full-screen viewing mode added as a new feature. At the moment the site is free and not monetized, but chief executive Rony Zarom told VentureBeat that it’s looking to pursue one of a number of different revenue models.

Content is limited just to YouTube videos for now, but that could obviously be expanded to include other sources over time. And with content still being key, that could prove to be the making of Watchitoo. This kind of application would obviously work better with long-form content such as full episodes of TV shows or feature films, rather than short-form clips of animals surfing and the like.

Conclusions

I like the idea of social viewing for online video, but every attempt at turning this into the next big Internet phenomenon has so far failed to really take off. Whether Watchitoo can manage to dig itself out of the niche sector and in to the mainstream remains to be seen. But it has a good chance of doing so because the site is designed well and deserves to flourish.

Live Video Streaming

The live video streaming sector is one of the most competitive across the whole online video market. Big names such as Justin.tv, Ustream, and Mogulus continue to evolve and improve in their efforts to become the number one brand and recognized in the same breath as Google, eBay, Amazon, and YouTube.

Mogulus recently rebranded itself to LiveStream, buying the frankly worth its weight in gold domain name to go with it. While Ustream underwent a radical redesign this time last year and then again in April of this year. Now, Justin.tv, the current traffic leader, has done the same. As well as a complete redesign of the site there are also a number of new features being added to the mix.

Justin.tv Redesign

The Justin.tv site has been given a visual overhaul, now looking cleaner and more simplified than before. The usability of the site has also been made more simpler, obviously an attempt to persuade more people than broadcasting isn’t something which requires degrees in film-making and electronics.

The main way this simple approach is achieved is by the introduction of one-touch recording. There’s no longer any need to sign up for an account or log in to an existing one. You can now start sharing live video with the world by “Live broadcasting in one click.” There is also now a Meebo IM chat bar present on each page of the site.

Camtweet and DVR Functionality

Justin.tv has also introduced a couple of very nice features in the last month. June saw DVR functionality come to the service. Now, when you’re watching something and realize you need to pause or stop watching for a while, you can click a button to give you the option to, “Continue watching this later.” The video will be recorded and you can begin watching from the point you left the video stream for up to seven days.

Just a few days ago Justin.tv also unveiled Camtweet, a new side project aimed at users of the micro-blogging social networking site Twitter. In essence, the yet-to-launch Twitter app allows you to broadcast live video on Twitter. Camtweet is a devilishly simple idea that brings Justin.tv functionality to the much-hyped Twitter just as it goes mainstream.

Conclusions

These changes are making Justin.tv a whole lot more user-friendly than it was previously. Which has got to be a good thing in such a crowded and competitive market. By appealing to the masses, and taking the pain out of live streaming, Justin.tv could be about to increase the lead it holds over its rivals. Until, of course, they up the ante once again. Either way, it’s broadcasters who benefit.

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Social Networking Features

Recent months have brought news of a couple of innovations in the field of matching up online video and social networking. The new Xbox 360 Sky Player will allow fans to watch football matches together using on-screen avatars. While both Joost and Hulu have recently unveiled new elements to their services which are designed to increase user interaction during programs. And CBS Interactive introduced Social Viewing Rooms to bring the idea of sitting around watching TV together in a living room to the Web.

Live Stream Box

Now comes a new feature which brings a similar concept to Facebook, the world’s largest social network with in excess of 200 million members. It’s called Live Stream Box and it enables Facebook users to watch a streaming video event, comment and chat while it is happening, and see their messages appearing both alongside the video and on their Facebook profile.

The feature was first tested during CNN’s streaming coverage of Barack Obama’s Presidential Inauguration earlier this year. Since then it has been used for Jonas Brothers concerts, some of the sites covering the Oscars, and the NBA All-Star game. With these tests proving successful, the feature is now being rolled out to anyone who wants in.

Open To All

According to the Facebook Developers Blog, any Web site owner can use the feature to enable Facebook users to share in a video event. This can be any “live streaming” occasion including “concerts, speeches, sporting events, webcasts, TV shows, presentations, or webinars.

The Live Stream Box is built to handle millions of viewers at a time, which is a good thing seeing as 1.5 million unique posts were made using the feature during the aforementioned Jonas Brothers concert. The dual posting on the Live Stream Box and Facebook itself means video events can go viral really quickly.

Ustream

All content owners are welcome to participate but Ustream is the first video site to take advantage of the feature. Ustream is expecting high demand, however, and so has set some limits on who can get involved. People who think they can benefit from the functionality of the new Ustream Live Stream Box have to apply to have it turned on. There is a free, ad-supported version with limited slots available, and a white-label version which requires a one-time development fee of $15,000.

Conclusions

Social networking is big business, as the success of Facebook, MySpace, Twitter and other sites shows. It’s good to see online video embracing social networking features to give it an added advantage over traditional television. The idea of watching the goggle box with a large group of people may be quite old-fashioned but it’s now helping a new generation of content providers connect with their audience.

Facebook Is Huge

Facebook is, at its heart, all about communication. The social network, now the biggest one in the world, even beating the giant that is MySpace, allow you to make friends and share your life with them. This sharing takes many forms, from messaging, to sharing photos, and of course, sharing video clips.

Facebook currently offers two forms of video interaction – the linking and embedding of external clips such as those from YouTube, Hulu, and the like; and the uploading of personal clips. This latter variety, which is 100 percent user-generated content, has seen Facebook steadily climb the video viewer charts until it is now banging on the door of the top ten.

Facebook Video Metrics

According to comScore, Facebook managed 12.5 million unique video viewers in March, 2009. This is nowhere near the amount enjoyed by its closest rival MySpace and isn’t that impressive when you consider the site has 200 million or so users, but seeing as video is just a small part of what the site offers, it’s not a bad result.

Having said that, that depends whether you believe the online video metrics are correct or not. Hulu has recently questioned the results because three different measurement companies produced three very different sets of results.

Facebook Video Chat

Regardless, Facebook seems intent on becoming the solution for all your communication needs, and live video chat could be the final frontier its aiming to cross to achieve such a heady aim. An AllFacebook reader recently spotted cached JavaScript files on Facebook which point towards live video chat being just around the corner.

The code is still currently available and shows notification messages such as, “Waiting for your friend…”, “Video call denied.”, “Incoming call:”, and “Loading video call…”. The intention seems clear: turn the live chat option currently offered on Facebook into a live video chat option instead.

Conclusions

This could, of course, be a speculative stab in the dark but it would certainly make sense for Facebook to want to head in that direction. And if it indeed does launch a live video chat service, it would be a huge blow for similar service already in existence. Skype is the undisputed video chat leader but there is also Google’s Gtalk within Gmail and Tokbox.

With 200 million plus users, all of whom already have a set of friends they’d probably love to chat to via video, Facebook could be about to corner the market.

Multimedia Maneuver

I like Reddit for many reasons. It may not be as huge or well-populated as Digg, be as clever as StumbleUpon, or have the glitzy new Web 2.0 elements Mixx has, but it’s simple and very easy-to-use. The clean lines and no-fuss interface is fine but it does mean multimedia such as photos and video are kind of shunned to the background.

But no longer. Today saw Reddit launch Reddit.tv, a separate entity from the main site which shows videos being voted for in a continuous stream. It’s an idea that isn’t particularly original, having already been done by Stumble Video and Twitmatic, but it’s great nonetheless.

Reddit.tv Demonstration

How It Works

As you can see from the video embedded above, Reddit.tv pulls the video content from the host site and embeds it. There are thumbnails and previews available for other videos, as well as a big ‘Show me more’ button so that should you get bored you can easily switch to a new recommended video clip.

There are a host of different categories which you can use to filter your selection of clips. Videos cannot currently be voted up or down from Reddit.tv, instead you are directed back to the main page. However, there is a nice bit of Twitter integration, with a click on the bluebird taking you to your Twitter account and auto-generating a tweet recommending the video you were last watching.

Sorting The Wheat From The Chaff

As Alexis on the Reddit blog suggests, “there’s no shortage of new video content online.” The problem, however, is trying to organize this video content and sort the wheat from the chaff. My first port of call for this would obviously be Web TV Hub, which has real people, including myself, choosing the clips which we feel deserve a bigger audience. But Reddit.tv also does a fine job of achieving the same thing.

I cannot work out why Digg hasn’t done something similar to this before now. The StumbleUpon method of finding and recommending sites means Stumble Video would always work, but Reddit.tv proves a similar style of video content organization and delivery can also work for text-based social bookmarking sites as well. Digg has been left wanting on this occasion.

Conclusions

There are some early technical difficulties. ReadWriteWeb reports that Safari is having trouble accessing the site, and I personally am having similar problems using Firefox. But issues such as these are to be expected on launch day, and so long as they are fixed in good time it shouldn’t harm the site too much.

As video content grows, these kinds of sites will become invaluable to those of us only interested in the very best of the Web. The only problem being, of course, that the recommendations are only ever as good as the people doing the voting. It would seem that if you’re a fan of the Reddit homepage, Reddit.tv will do just nicely.

Video Blogging

Video blogging, or vlogging, has been around for quite a while now. Video blogs, either as a counterpart, or as a separate entity, from a written blog, can work extremely well. The only problem is finding things to say on them, and then videoing yourself and uploading it to the Web.

12seconds

12seconds solves both of those problems in one fell swoop. Users of the site are limited to posting 12 seconds worth of video at a time. This isn’t much time, but it’s enough to enable those who want to, to get their point across and say what they want to say.

Once having joined the site, which is a simple process that require very few details, an Adobe Flash recorder allows anyone with a Webcam to record their thoughts for posterity.

Easy To Use

Basically, those people put off the idea of video blogging in the past due to either technical difficulties or a lack of having something to say can now climb on board and give it a go.

As well as posting videos yourself, you can also browse other people’s efforts. There are featured posts as well as sections to look at everyone’s videos, or limit it to just your friends. And if you’re stuck for an idea of what to say for that one fifth of a minute, there are prompts by way of set questions.

Twitter For Video

The comparisons with Twitter are obvious and ultimately fair. But whether 12seconds can do for online video and vlogging what Twitter is currently doing for social networking and micro-blogging remains to be seen.

Issues

The biggest problem to my mind is still people’s lack of willingness to show their face on the Web. While Twitter allows you to post random thoughts as anonymously as you like, 12seconds users would have to wear a balaclava to achieve the same thing.

There’s also the problem of editing. While the simple recording tool on 12seconds makes it a relatively painless experience to re-record your clip, it’s never going to be as simple as editing the written word.

But the biggest issue for me has to be the value of what people are saying. I enjoy Twitter because I follow a set of people I believe have interesting things to say. A couple of days into using 12seconds and I’ve still yet to find someone I feel the need to hear what they have to say.

Conclusions

I like what 12seconds is doing – bringing vlogging to the masses and keeping it short and simple. But I’m not sure it has the potential to do a Twitter and become the next great social networking idea. Still, try it out because the more people that do so, the more likely it is to show its potential.

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PC Vs TV

Until now, and even at this point, the vast majority of people use their computers, and only their computers, to access the Internet. It just makes sense, with a PC or laptop made for the job with its crisp monitor and mouse and keyboard combination.

But things are slowly changing. Mobile Internet is becoming big business, rapidly growing all over the world but especially in Asia. And the number of living room devices that can be hooked up to the Web is also growing at a seemingly exponential rate.

A Range Of Options

There are the televisions themselves, with a new range of Internet-enabled TVs announced at the recent CES in Las Vegas. And then there are the set-top boxes such as Roku and Apple TV, as well as hybrid Blu-ray/Web TV players.

But while these are all great, they’re unlikely to sell in any great numbers at the moment, with the mainstream not yet feeling the need to have everything hooked up to the Internet. It will change, but until digital downloads and streaming video become the norm rather than the niche, it won’t happen.

Video Game Consoles

Which is where games consoles come in. All the current-gen consoles, PS3, Xbox 360, and Wii, can be hooked up to the Internet. This is currently mainly used for online gaming, but there are seemingly endless possibilities for the consoles to be used to deliver online video to people’s front rooms.

The PS3 and Wii have their own browsers, meaning any owner of one of these console can potentially use them to visit video Web sites and watch videos on their big, widescreen, (probably) HD televisions. The Xbox doesn’t currently have a browser but does have dedicated video services, the latest of which is Netflix.

YouTube TV Web Site

YouTube has recently announced the launch of a ‘TV Web site’ (located at youtube.com/tv) which is being initially targeted at PS3 and Wii owners. The need for a version of the site specifically designed for use on consoles is the lack, generally, of a keyboard and mouse. PS3 owners are stuck with a traditional controller while the Wii Remote offers a point and click variation on the mouse.

The new TV-optimized version of YouTube is stripped down, and offers the bare essentials. You can still log into your account or search for videos and channels but the layout has been altered to cater for console owners.

Conclusions

This is a good move when you consider that there are 40 million Wiis. 30 million Xboxes, and 20 million Playstation 3s in the world right now. And that figure is only going to climb over the next few years.

It could be that games consoles provide the perfect opportunity for video sites to start integrating more into the living room. And YouTube has seen the potential first, discounting the BBC iPlayer. Let’s just hope Hulu and the like now follow suit.

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An Evolving TV.com

I know TV.com as an information and community resource all about television. If there was a new series that I needed to find out about, or a need to check the episode guide for Lost or Heroes, TV.com would be my first port of call.

While those factors remain, with new added social networking features, the site is now being rapidly turned into a comprehensive database of online video. If there’s content to be had, CBS wants it on TV.com.

First Hulu, Now More

TV.com has been syndicating content from Hulu for the last six months, but CBS has now also tied up deals to offer video content from MGM, Sony, PBS, Endemol USA, and Showtime. As well as starting to offer its own content at last.

The new content has coincided with a redesign of the site which has improved the old, clunky, and disorganized layout into one much easier to navigate. The forums and ways to interact with fellow fans of individual shows have remained.

Fighting The Competition

With these new efforts to reorganize the site, CBS is trying to become a one-stop shop with elements of Hulu, Joost, and Fancast. The much sought-after domain name and already impressive traffic numbers (up to 16 million monthly unique visitors) will surely help CBS in this aim.

None of the deals announced are exclusive, with all content being available on at least one other Web site. However, while CBS.com already has CBS shows Hulu does not, meaning it’s already got an advantage over its nearest rival.

Hulu Vs TV.com

Hulu is of course the master at building a comprehensive portal for long-form Web video, but that’s really only because the joint venture between NBC and News Corps was to first to seriously attempt such a thing.

CBS has now made TV.com a serious competitor in this field. And with the traffic already there, and the social elements drawing people in, I wouldn’t bet against the venture succeeding.

[Via The New York Times]